I haven't seen anyone post information on this list about the FTDNA conference in Houston that took place this past weekend. Overall, I really enjoyed it. It was about my 7th or so conference in a row. Debbie Kennett has written a blog post at https://cruwys.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/ftdnas-13th-international-genetic.html that includes links to some of the blogs and tweets from this conference. Jennifer Zinck's notes are particularly comprehensive. I also took about 9 pages of notes. One thing from the conference that I thought deserves more complete discussion is the conversion of Family Finder from the Illumina Omni Express chip to the Illumina GSA chip which will reportedly be occurring in about 5 to 6 months. I submitted this question during the Q and A session and I was pleased that Elliott Greenspan was willing to address it. There are currently only 161,882 SNPs that are found in both Family Finder and the Illumina GSA chip. This is a relatively small number of SNPs and this has made it challenging for GEDmatch to generate matching HIR data between Living DNA or 23andMe v5 data and Family Finder data. Eilliott said that FTDNA had been able to get a concession from Illumina to double the number of SNPs on the new chip that FTDNA will be using that are identical to the SNPs found on the Omni Express chip. Presumably that will mean that the number of SNPs that are found on the new Illumina chip and the Omni Express chip will be in the range of 320,000 or so. That should be enough to generate reasonable match lists even without doing any imputation for all but HIRs in the shorter range (under 15 cMs or so). FTDNA may be able to improve the quality of matching HIRs by doing at least some imputation. FTDNA could also do more to generate matching segments with phased data than they do currently as well. So far 23andMe seems to be doing a fairly good job with imputation so that one gets reasonably reliable matches using v5 data from the GSA chip as compared to v2, v3, and v4 data. The conversion to the new chip will presumably also impact the data files for people who test at MyHeritage since FTDNA is processing all of MyHeritage's DNA tests. I presume that FTDNA will be able to eventually accept Living DNA data and 23andMe v5 data once FTDNA has made the conversion over to the new customized GSA chip. I would also like to encourage everyone who has not done testing of parent/child pairs or trios to test with Family Finder since that will improve FTDNA's ability to phase your data. I hope that the GSA chip is the last major SNP array that Illumina develops that holds 700,000 or so SNPs and is used for genealogical purposes. The comparison of data from the Omni Express chip and the GSA chip has been difficult to do for those of us who like to compare data from all of the companies' SNP chip results. If you want to see the comparison chart that shows how much overlap there is between the various different SNP chips as delivered by each company, see https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_SNP_comparison_chart. Sincerely, Tim Janzen

Hi Tim Was there any talk of updating tools on FT DNA? For example being able to search family finder matches by location would be useful Karen On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 5:58 PM, Tim Janzen <[email protected]> wrote: > I haven't seen anyone post information on this list about the FTDNA > conference in Houston that took place this past weekend. Overall, I really > enjoyed it. It was about my 7th or so conference in a row. Debbie Kennett > has written a blog post at > https://cruwys.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/ftdnas-13th- > international-genetic.html > that includes links to some of the blogs and tweets from this conference. > Jennifer Zinck's notes are particularly comprehensive. I also took about 9 > pages of notes. > > > > One thing from the conference that I thought deserves more complete > discussion is the conversion of Family Finder from the Illumina Omni > Express > chip to the Illumina GSA chip which will reportedly be occurring in about 5 > to 6 months. I submitted this question during the Q and A session and I > was > pleased that Elliott Greenspan was willing to address it. There are > currently only 161,882 SNPs that are found in both Family Finder and the > Illumina GSA chip. This is a relatively small number of SNPs and this has > made it challenging for GEDmatch to generate matching HIR data between > Living DNA or 23andMe v5 data and Family Finder data. Eilliott said that > FTDNA had been able to get a concession from Illumina to double the number > of SNPs on the new chip that FTDNA will be using that are identical to the > SNPs found on the Omni Express chip. Presumably that will mean that the > number of SNPs that are found on the new Illumina chip and the Omni Express > chip will be in the range of 320,000 or so. That should be enough to > generate reasonable match lists even without doing any imputation for all > but HIRs in the shorter range (under 15 cMs or so). FTDNA may be able to > improve the quality of matching HIRs by doing at least some imputation. > FTDNA could also do more to generate matching segments with phased data > than > they do currently as well. So far 23andMe seems to be doing a fairly good > job with imputation so that one gets reasonably reliable matches using v5 > data from the GSA chip as compared to v2, v3, and v4 data. The conversion > to the new chip will presumably also impact the data files for people who > test at MyHeritage since FTDNA is processing all of MyHeritage's DNA tests. > I presume that FTDNA will be able to eventually accept Living DNA data and > 23andMe v5 data once FTDNA has made the conversion over to the new > customized GSA chip. I would also like to encourage everyone who has not > done testing of parent/child pairs or trios to test with Family Finder > since > that will improve FTDNA's ability to phase your data. > > > > I hope that the GSA chip is the last major SNP array that Illumina develops > that holds 700,000 or so SNPs and is used for genealogical purposes. The > comparison of data from the Omni Express chip and the GSA chip has been > difficult to do for those of us who like to compare data from all of the > companies' SNP chip results. If you want to see the comparison chart that > shows how much overlap there is between the various different SNP chips as > delivered by each company, see > https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_SNP_comparison_chart. > > Sincerely, > > Tim Janzen > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >